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Baseball: Clark Powers Greenwood Past Southside

Greenwood coach Randy Gardner knew all the Bulldogs needed Monday was a two-out hit at the right time.

It took awhile, but Ethan Clark delivered a two-run double in the sixth inning to power the Bulldogs to a 7-1 win against Southside at Forsgren Field at Evans Boys & Girls Club.

Clark finished with three RBIs and beat Southside for the second time this season by striking out nine in five solid innings of work.

“That gave us a little breathing room right there, which is always good,” Gardner said of Clark’s hit. “It looked like there was going to be a lot of scoring early and we started leaving people on and you look up and it’s still 2-1 in the fifth inning. All it takes is one person getting a big hit and you end up with five or six more.”

Houston Kennedy’s two-run double gave the Bulldogs a quick 2-0 lead in the first.

After Andrew Bailey singled home Jordy Lawrence with the Rebels’ only run in the second, both starting pitchers — Clark and Southside’s Tanner Wiley — began working a little magic.

Wiley wiggled out of two bases-loaded jams in the second and third and Greenwood left two more runners on in the fourth.

“He was up in the zone a little bit, but he competed,” Southside coach Craig Jones said. “He got his pitch count up a little bit, and once he got it up there, we pulled him. We’re not going to run guys out there and get them hurt.”

Greenwood stranded 12 runners of its own, narrowly missing a chance to fatten the lead in the third when Chris Sunde’s bases-loaded smash past third was ruled foul.

“We hit a ball down the line that would have scored two that one time and then we struck out,” Gardner said. “We definitely had our chance to score double-digit runs.”

The Rebels (14-7, 6-4) weren’t without chances too. Despite being held to six hits, Southside stranded 11 runners and were just 1-of-7 with runners in scoring position.

The Rebels, who host Catholic Friday, had the lead-off runner on in four of the first six innings.